'The Hard Times of RJ Berger' Premiere Episodes

The Hard Times of RJ Berger, about a high school loser with an unusually large endowment, tries to be both raunchy and heartfelt, and ends up with an awkward mix of the two. Its humor is sometimes too vulgar and off-putting, and its storylines are often predictable, but it has potential to turn into a decent low-key teen comedy.

Any show that opens with the teenage lead character getting caught masturbating is off to a pretty inauspicious start, and indeed the first episode of The Hard Times of RJ Berger is lackluster, relying too much on the shock value of (bleeped) swear words and gross-out moments (a drunk girl vomits on one of the male characters, and then he kisses her on the mouth) to grab the audience’s attention. Somehow, though, it calms down over the course of the next two episodes, and while it’s not exactly good, it is a series that shows the potential to be worth watching once it figures out what kind of show it wants to be.

Creators David Katzenberg and Seth Grahame-Smith clearly have a great love for classic teen comedies, and thus Hard Times drags out the big guns of teen stories pretty quickly: In the second episode, lovable loser RJ runs for student-body president, and in the third he gets the lead in the school play. At this rate homecoming, the big game and the prom will probably all show up before the first season is halfway over. Those touchstones are probably meant to make the show feel iconic, but so far they come off more like predictable clichés.

The main characters, too, are right out of the Teen Comedy 101 playbook: There’s RJ, the nerd, whose only unexpected quality is the large manhood referenced in the show’s title. There’s RJ’s oversexed, overweight best friend Miles and his sarcastic platonic female pal Lily (who’s no Daria). There’s RJ’s bland blonde dream girl and her jerky jock boyfriend. All that’s missing to complete the Breakfast Club set is the druggie burnout.

The plot device of RJ’s big member is treated as extremely important in the first episode and then practically ignored later; likewise, there are several bleeped F-words in the pilot, and none in subsequent episodes. It’s like the creators got much of the vulgarity (but certainly not all of it) out of their system early on, and then settled into something more mainstream. The show still relies on too many high school clichés and is too willing to go “edgy” for a cheap laugh, but if it finds its footing, it could almost be worthy of all the teen-comedy comparisons it’s begging for.

Disclosure: A review screener was provided by the network. For more information, please see our Ethics Policy.